Carcass’ return to the metal arena has been an unbridled success, with their comeback album Surgical Steel earning plaudits by the entrails-filled bucket load, including, Ghost Cult’s own Album of the Year for 2013. Released due to demand from fans not in a position to purchase the multiple formats of the Surgical Steel release (and to be fair, no matter how good it is, why would you just for a couple of tracks), and comprising of the bonus tracks of the various formats from last years’ release, Surgical Remission/Surplus Steel (Nuclear Blast) is an EP to close the first, but hopefully by no means last, chapter of the return of Liverpool’s true best band.
I have an issue with bonus tracks. Not quite as big an issue as I have with spoilers, but a problem at least the size of the riff at the end of ‘Mount of Execution’. If a band doesn’t consider a song good enough to feature on the album proper, then why release it at all? And …Remission is clearly the poorer, unwelcome black sheep of the family of Surgical Steel. Whereas Steel has bite, purpose and intensity, even in its’ more melodic moments, with the exception of the thrashing and grinding last minute of ‘Intensive Battery Brooding’, an excellent shot in the arm of a section, Remission is ponderous.
‘A Wraith In The Apparatus’ starts well enough, with a trademark Bill Steer riff and Jeff Walker’s acidic delivery, but whereas Surgical Steel was scalpel sharp, ‘Wraith…’, ‘Battery’ and ‘Zochrot’ are, by comparison, like trying to cut through flesh and bone with a blunt butter knife. Decent enough songs, and distinctively Carcass, but pedestrian, lacking the pace, drive and quality of the album, and falling short of the very high standards Death Metal’s finest have set and live up to. ‘Livestock Marketplace’ is uninspired, with Walker’s normal venom neutered and distilled into a Dave Mustaine-esque whine, before a re-working of ‘Hellion’ tribute ‘1985’ concludes matters.
There’s nothing to worry about here, though, as the quality control process happened in the studio as these were the songs not graded sufficient pedigree butchery meat for the surgeons table, but this collection of leftovers makes for an EP that is surely for collectors only
6.0/10
STEVE TOVEY